Evaporating Ennui Water Calligraphy in Beijing

Early in the morning, groups of retired or middle-aged men and women flock to the public parks to cover the floors with calligraphy in all shapes and sizes using water instead of ink. This particularly public type of calligraphy started after the Reform and Opening-up policy at the beginning of the 1980s and spread from the capital of Beijing to public parks allover China. It is called water calligraphy, or ground writing in Chinese (dishu 地书) and takes up a significant part of the everyday lives of a growing number of people in China. This chapter offers an ethnographic account of the distinctive spatial, ephemeral, and social characteristics of water calligraphy.